


Snowflakes and Ashes

by wiltedlettuce



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Gender Changes, Drabble Collection, Everybody Lives, Female Jon Snow, Multi, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, R plus L equals J, Rule 63, Self-Indulgent
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-09-10
Updated: 2017-11-08
Packaged: 2018-12-25 22:17:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 2,609
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12045423
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wiltedlettuce/pseuds/wiltedlettuce
Summary: Jonna Snow was stolen at fourteen and presumed dead. The 998th Lord Commander learns otherwise when his bastard's bastard is found with the wildlings nearly five years later.((Connected drabbles not posted in chronological order))





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Self-indulgent nonsense in which Jon Snow's a lady, the Starks all live, the dead still march, and hardly any plot gets written!

The girl had the Stark look.

That was the first thing that stuck out to Eddard Stark, eyeing the child swaddled in wildling furs and held protectively in a spearwife’s grip. The Stark look but with Targaryen eyes. It was something he had dreaded near twenty years ago, with another bastard girl kept close to his heart and hearth. He was only lucky that it happened so far north that it wasn’t even truly _his_ North any longer. The law of the Seven Kingdoms had no sway beyond the Wall, and Robert Baratheon was long dead, besides.

There was no one left but Eddard himself to be heartbroken over what this child proved.

And what a heartbreak it was. His daughter, his little Jo, barely more than a babe the last he saw her, had disappeared and had herself a babe of her own. He had thought her dead – had hoped she was dead, for her own sake – but instead, this little girl who refused to give him her name gave him the knowledge that Jonna was alive.

“Get away! Get away, get away, _get away_!” She’d taken to screaming anytime one of the black brothers came to close to the cell door. “My mama’ll kill you when she gets here! Feed you to her wolves!”

When Maester Aemon’s steward had first cautiously approached him about the girl, he’d just about boxed the boy’s ears. No one had dared speak of Jonna in his presence since Robert declared her dead to whisk him away South, not even the Lannisters, but this boy, sent to exile by his own father, had the gall to mention her to him!

Even after Eddard had snapped and snarled at him, brave, young Samwell Tarly powered on. He stuttered through it, his nerves obviously shaken at the Lord Commander’s rage, but he eventually got the story of a little girl kept with the spearwives who looked like she could be his own child.

His heart had skipped a beat despite the steward already mentioning an estimated age – five was a long way from fourteen – but he couldn’t help it. It was impossible, but some part of him expected to find Jo in the cells, looking just the way she had the last he saw her. A fool’s dream. It’d been over four years, and eighteen was even further away from five than fourteen was.

A heartbreak and a half was what that little girl he found was, but she was so much more, all the same.

He considered removing her from the cells and away from the wildlings, but the memory of her screeching put a swift end to that plan. Instead, he ordered his men to keep away from them unless delivering meals and focused his attention elsewhere the best he could.

He questioned a few wildling men himself, but not of what was beyond the Wall. Instead, he asked after a girl with his coloring whose daughter was held in the dungeons. He knew that he had forsaken his own family when he took his vows, and he had thought that he had made his peace with that – dreams of fire-red hair, besides. But the fact that his daughter – _Lyanna’s daughter_ – was alive somewhere allowed the worn tethers of an old promise to hook themselves back into his heart.

_Promise me, Ned. You must protect her…promise me!_

Most of the wildlings refused to answer, but it only took one of them for him to learn what he wanted. Jonna, who no longer went by Snow, had been stolen by Mance Rayder from Winterfell the last night of the King’s visit. (And, oh, how it rankled, knowing that wildlings had been in his own castle!) She had put up a good fight, getting one of the scout’s in the thigh, near crippling the boy, but had eventually been overpowered and taken.

Eddard’s heart hurt at the thought of what his negligence had allowed, but he forced himself to listen anyway. After going beyond the Wall, Jonna had adapted and learned, eventually being stolen again, though this time, she apparently went willingly. She’d lay with a man named Garth to whom she eventually bore a daughter – the very girl in the bowels of Castle Black. Garth was dead, by Jonna’s own hand, and she had recently had another child.

“A son!” The wildling man grinned. “Whose son? Nobody knows! Bitch claims he’s the son of a direwolf, and with wargs, ya can’t ever be sure.”

The tale had obvious holes, and when pressed on where she currently was, the man was less forthcoming. 

“Can’t break trust when tellin’ a story,” he reasoned,” but snitchin’ to crows, now tha’s bad business.”

Eddard conceded with one last question, and the man had answered it easily enough.

The little girl’s name – it was Lyra.


	2. Chapter 2

Ygritte bit back a curse when Garth’s fist bashed against his daughter’s head.

Her yelp, reminiscent of a dog, drew attention from the surrounding fires, the eyes and whispers of the Free Folk watching as he disciplined his Southron woman’s get. Jonna wasn’t here – off scouting with the other wargs on Mance’s orders – and all but one of her wolves had gone with her. The only one that remained was injured, its front legs burned and bandaged into little more than stumps. But still, it growled and snarled from its prostrate position near the tent as Garth snapped harsh reprimands at Lyra.

The little girl had tears in her eyes, but she refused to let them fall. Ygritte was reluctantly impressed – for a girl who had been named just a year past, she was a strong one - just like her Southron mother. A sentiment Ygritte never thought would have crossed her mind, but it was true. Jonna Snow was a force to be reckoned with, and Garth would regret being stupid enough to leave a mark on the whelp. 

The direwolf, somehow still intimidating in its crippled state, howled, the piercing sound echoed by the rest of its pack responding. They were close. Far closer than they should have been. Ygritte glanced at the moon’s position – it was still high above her head, the night still young. The scouting party wasn’t meant to return until right before the break of dawn, but the Stark girl’s wolves sounded as though they’d be at the camp in minutes.

She chanced a glance back at Garth, taking note of his gray pallor and loosening grip on the girl’s arm. By the uptick in whispers, it looked like she wasn’t the only one to notice. Ygritte spared a thought of remorse at losing another fighter, but, really, the man had asked for it. Everyone knew by now that, despite her pampered upbringing, Jonna Snow was dangerous, even without her wolves. That the man continued to draw her anger even after several years of lying with her was a sign of his lack of survival instinct, and Ygritte saluted him with a mock grimace.

Garth’s corpse was found at daybreak.

The scene wasn’t as gruesome as most warg kills. He was mostly intact – only his arms were found to be missing – and what did him in seemed to be a single wound between his ribs.

Wisely, no one mentioned anything at the new bones Jonna’s pack recently acquired. It was for the best really. Wouldn’t do to have a warg in control of direwolves leave the army to live on her own, or, even worse, join the Thenns.


	3. Chapter 3

Jonna remembered a time when grey and white silk ribbons and a stoic visage were her weapons.

She may have been a bastard, but she was the Warden of the North’s claimed bastard. His eldest daughter – whom he loved so much, he raised her among his trueborn children in Winterfell. She had never been allowed to wear the Stark sigil, but not even Lady Catelyn could take away the ribbons in the house colors that her lord father had given to her.

She had moved along Winterfell’s halls as something other. A lord’s daughter, yet not a lady.

The servants offered her some respect, but they would never bow or curtsy to her as they did her siblings. Visiting bannermen would mention her pretty face and likeliness to her long-dead aunt, but never in front of her father or his wife. Her siblings loved her – none so much as her darling Arya – but she was forever only their _half-sister_. Sansa, especially, took great pains never to call her anything but. Robb had been close to her when they were young, but a difference in lessons and a certain Greyjoy hostage quickly changed that. And Lady Catelyn made certain that she never spent too much time with her youngest boys.

It was only Arya who never made the distinction, and it was little Arya Underfoot that Jonna missed the most. It was Arya who often occupied her mind, even as Mance Rayder forced her up and over the Wall and through the frozen wasteland that was the true North.

Now, with her weapons of a sword and her growing wolf pack, Jonna faced something truly other for the first time, and she prayed that Arya would forgive her if she died before making it back home to see her.

The wight was ghastly, with its rotted flesh frozen white and its piercing blue eyes. The monster was missing an arm, and it ran towards their hunting party with alarming speed. Jonna fumbled to unsheathe her sword – stolen from a Thenn, much to Tormund’s glee – and cursed when she just barely lifted it to block the oncoming attack only for it to be yanked from her grip.

An arrow from behind her is the only thing that saved her life, and she scrambled to the flurry of her wolves. The two direwolves snarled as they encircled her, and she used their cover to pull out her dragonglass dagger – yet another stolen weapon.

But before she could do anything, the problem was dealt with.

Someone had wised up and used their torch to start warding the creature back, and Jonna watched with bated breath as another circled around it to catch the wight on fire. At its demise, her wolves darted off to search for any more danger, and a heavy hand landed on her shoulder.

She glanced up to see Karsi offer her a grim smile, “You did well for a Southron, girl.”

Jonna bit back the instinctive sneer at being called such and nodded, clenching her fists to hide her trembling hands. She didn’t feel like she did well; if anything, she had nearly gotten killed. She watched the smoldering dead body and swore to herself that she would do better next time.

No more being caught by surprise. If one of the wildlings told her of something, she would treat it as truth, no matter how otherworldly or ridiculous it sounded.

She wouldn’t allow anything to kill her; at least, not before she saw her little sister one last time.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Of the chapters posted so far, this one will be the last chronologically.  
> As always, not proof-read.

Jonna Snow was a dangerous woman, of that Stannis was certain.

He remembered seeing her in Winterfell once after the Greyjoy Rebellion, when she was still just a girl running around with her only brother at the time, but the woman in front of him – who dressed as a wildling savage, spoke like a wildling savage, and held a wilding savage’s child to her breast – was far cry from Eddard Stark’s darling little bastard girl.

Stannis could still remember the Northern outcry when the girl had disappeared, whispers leaking south of how the girl was just as her aunt in both looks and fate, but it appeared they were only half correct. For Jonna Snow may have been stolen just as Lyanna Stark had been at age fourteen, but here she stood, still alive and thriving five years later beyond the wall.

And with the news of her survival came the warning of the Others.

The Night’s Watch had been sending letters to the entire realm for more men, more supplies, more support for years, but many had brushed them aside with scoffs of distaste. The Wall was little more than a penal colony, and why should the lords of the land support criminals with gold they could use to help their own?

But Stannis knew the worth of the Wall, and he did not plan on allowing it to fail. Wildlings would never have the chance to invade his rightful kingdom and ruin it with their barbaric ways if he had anything to do with it.

And when he received a letter signed with _Eddard Stark, The 998 th Commander of the Night’s Watch_ at the bottom, he didn’t dare disbelieve what he had read.

Straight from a Northern story, the Others were more than grumpkins and snarks beyond the wall, raising the dead to form an army ready to ravage the rest of the world at their leisure. It was entirely unacceptable, and Stannis had routed his army North as soon as it was feasible, his daughter, his wife, and that blasted red woman in tow.

So, there he was, at the edge of the world, in a council with wildlings, black brothers, and a girl who should have been dead.

She stood with the wildling called Tormund, who had become something of a leader after the Red Woman burned the King-Beyond-the-Wall, and stared at them all as if they’d attack her. Stannis didn’t think any man in the room would dare to allow the thought to cross their mind with the way the Lord Commander is tracking her every move with his silvery-grey eyes.

It must have been unnerving for the man; five years past thinking the girl dead, only to find her alive and well – a woman grown with children of her own and fighting for the wildlings. There was a saying that the first heart a girl breaks will always be her father’s, and Stannis can see here that this may hold some truth.

Jonna Snow stands tall, chin tilted proudly and shoulders thrown back. We do not kneel, indeed, Stannis thought dryly. None of the wildlings in council had bowed at their entrance, but Jonna Snow, a girl raised in the Seven Kingdoms, was the most defiant in her refusal. A slight sneer paired with narrowed eyes – all cool disdain –  and compared to the others’ snarled insults and spit, it was so obvious that she was raised a highborn for all that she wasn’t.

Stannis couldn’t help the stray thought – did she consider herself in a better position now than what she had as a warden’s claimed child? Did Jonna Snow truly believe that she had risen from her baseborn status to become a wilding savage when the rest of the Seven Kingdoms would surely consider her as lesser for it?

But it didn’t matter what she thought. Not in that matter, anyway.

The only thing of worth left to her now was in the information she provided of the enemy and her position as a liaison between the wildlings and himself as the rightful king.

Though, perhaps, after the battle was won, if she was still alive, he might offer a place in his household. For her and her children. Shireen was still a bit too soft for his liking, and she was his heir. She could learn a thing or two about how to comport herself to demand respect from this half-wild bastard girl. Yes, Stannis thought, watching Jonna snarl at an insult thrown her way by Thorne; Shireen could do with a woman like Jonna Snow to look up to.


End file.
